He’s got England’s highest ever T20 international score, the second most runs, the third most caps, and the fourth highest average. So surely there’s a strong case for recalling Alex Hales before the T20 World Cup? After all, winning this tournament seems to be the ECB’s top priority in 2021. Jack Swaby looks at the arguments …
It has been almost two years since Alex Hales was dropped from the England set-up after testing positive for recreational drugs. White ball captain Eoin Morgan revealed the decision was due to a ‘complete breakdown in trust’ between Hales and the senior members of the squad – a decision that was met with widespread support among the cricket community.
Despite England’s triumphant campaign, Hales was sorely missed during the World Cup. The injury to Jason Roy midway through the tournament saw James Vince, effectively Hales’ replacement, take his place in the side. Vince is a fine player, and a better technical batsman than the Nottinghamshire opener, but lacks the power and natural aggression that Roy offers. Hales could have provided this in the Surrey man’s absence.
There were calls for Hales’ inclusion in the England white ball bubble over the summer, but Morgan remained strong and insisted that not enough time had elapsed for trust to be rebuilt. However, there have been signs that frostiness might be gradually thawing, with Eoin admitting that time “is a great healer”.
The MCC graduate has also hit the headlines for the right reasons in recent weeks. A staggering Big Bash season for the Sydney Thunder, which included a stunning century against table toppers and local rivals Sydney Sixers, saw him rise to the top of the run scoring charts.
Hales has also thoroughly outshone his countrymen that are also on the fringes of the England set up such as Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone and Nottinghamshire teammate Joe Clarke.
The most striking aspect of Hales’ performances, however, is his improvement against spin bowling. So often his achilles heel, he looked remarkably competent and consistently took the attack to the spinners throughout the Big Bash campaign.
His improvement in this area, and his consistency through the tournament, will have certainly attracted the attention of the England selectors. Jason Roy has struggled for form since cricket’s resumption in the summer and is often targeted early in innings with spin due to his limitations against slow bowling.
With spin looking likely to play a huge role in the T20 World Cup in India in October, questions need to be asked about the entire England batting order’s ability against spin in such conditions. Hales, along with number one ranked T20 International batsman David Malan, is one of only two Englishmen to score an International T20 hundred and only captain Morgan has scored more T20 runs in England colours.
There is no doubt, based purely on form and cricketing reputation that the Nottinghamshire man deserves an England recall in the build up to the tournament. Those pushing for a Hales return have made comparisons with Kevin Pietersen, who was initially given another chance after the messaging scandal involving Andrew Strauss.
These comparisons are not likely to benefit Hales though, as one cannot compare the influence Pietersen had over English cricket at this time, and his status as England’s best batsman of the era. England are also a different outfit these days with a clear set of principles and strong leadership. Pietersen’s assimilation back into the side corresponded with a change of leadership, and it seems in this case that Morgan is going nowhere any time soon.
Given the transformation of England’s white ball team over the past five years, Morgan has earned the right to make any decision he feels is of benefit to the team, and thus this has left Hales out in the cold. However, people continue to press for his recall. For example, former England captain Michael Vaughan recently said that he’d like to see Hales given another opportunity, even thought he saw ‘no way back’ for him immediately after his positive drugs test.
Ability has never been the question throughout this affair: there is no doubt that the England white ball teams would be stronger with a player of Hales’ pedigree, ability and experience. The only question now is whether these traits, combined with Hales’ new found confidence and improvements against spin, are enough to persuade the management to forgive and forget.
It’s important to remember that Ben Stokes went from zero to hero after being in the headlines for the wrong reasons. There would’ve been no World Cup final masterclass nor that unforgettable Ashes knock at Headingley if grudges had been held.
Morgan, along with the selectors, must now decide whether to give Hales a similar shot at redemption in a year when England could become the first nation to hold both World Cups simultaneously.
Jack Swaby
I don’t see much sign of a thaw between Morgan and Hales after his latest comments about the 20-20 side not needing another batsman. Hales is clearly a class act and in my opinion has paid his dues. If he has a decent start to the domestic season I see no reason for him not to be in contention. I woüld far rather see him opening the innings than Roy, who seems to have lost the plot since his test selection last year and certainly has more glaring technical weaknesses than Hales, who is just as destructive a batsman. Hales knows he is on last chance chance saloon should he be selected.
I must admit I’ve felt a bit uneasy about Morgan’s comments. He sounds more like the Chairman of selectors. Of course a captain should be consulted about selection, but he should not select the side – he should, along with the coach, look to get the best out of the squad selected.
What Eoin Morgan wants, Eoin Morgan gets!
It will probably depend on how well England do in the upcoming series. If they win easily, Morgan can justify keeping him out; if they struggle then the clamour for his return will intensify.
FWIW, I am Team Hales. He’s done his penance and England will need their best players to give themselves the best chance of doing the World Cup double.
Ali Martin’s article in the Guardian goes much further than that–he pretty explicitly says that Morgan is the selector for the white-ball team and that the withdrawal from the SA tour was his decision, and he implies that he may well be the coach too.
I agree completely John–and I think Morgan has much too much power in English cricket at the moment. Even in that one article, he’s basically taking over the roles of Smith, Giles and Silverwood.
There are worse people to be in charge here than Morgan. For me he has been the guiding light behind the success of our 20-20 outfit particularly and I would rather have him selecting the team than Smith or Silverwood, particularly after their panic attacks during the test series.
I am a fan of Hales the cricketer. Hales the man is largely irrelevant if he can be trusted to deliver the goods on the field. Look at Kevin (motormouth) Pieterson. Not the most popular dressing room teamplayer, but despite Cook’s reservations in this department still selected. You pick any 12 men off the street and you’ll get jarring personalities, so why expect different in a dressing room.
For me, it’s not about the qualities of Morgan as a selector or anything else. It’s about the AMOUNT of control he appears to have over such a range of things (both the decision to leave the SA tour and the decision to ban Hales should be DoC decisions, not the one-day captain’s), and at the very least about being transparent about who’s responsible for what.
That said, to my perception there’s a certain quality about some of Morgan’s decisions that seems to be somewhere between moral rigidity and bullying–as there was with Flower–which i don’t think is helpful…and whose effects are exacerbated if he has virtually unlimited power.
I agree with the last sentence–and it seems that in the last decade England have forgotten that management includes how to get the best out of a disparate group of individuals as opposed to trying to reduce them all to a bland algorhythmical template.
Give me a leader who has a vision any day to a committee.
Morgan is clearly an expert in his field and has the respect of most around him or he would have been absorbed into the committee structure by now.
An established captain should ideally have the last say on those he is to lead as divisive relationships on and off the field can badly affect team spirit. Smith and Silverwood are not 20-20 experts, so you’ve got a captain who knows more about the game than the selectors, who don’t have to deal with effects of their selections on the field. I think it is to their credit that Smith and Silverwood appear to have realised this and make allowances.
Anyone who’s been involved in cricket at club level will have experienced a deal of this divisiveness.
The headlines say no thaw. The comment at the end that ‘time is a great healer’ says yes. Imho. At least that was my take.
If Hales has kept his nose clean (ahem) then surely he deserves a chance for rehabilitation. On form, he’s clearly in so it comes down to the extent to which his team (i.e. Morgan) trusts him not to rain on the team’s parade. Everyone deserves a second chance and maybe this is Hales’.
Agree that he should be back in the squad. I feel that Morgan has too much say now. Stokes was only several jurors away from prison and that incident obviously impacted Hales. Where was the support? As I see it he will only get back in when Morgan retires.
Captains and senior players becoming part of the manahement team has been the England way since the Moores-Flower era. When Morgan retires, the recent parallels are that, if he wants to, he’ll become part of official management. Hales’ main crime was not to alert management what had happened in the Stokes’ incident – reputedly he went golfing the following morning. That said, knowing he had that strike against him his subsequent behaviour was pretty dumb.
Hales scored his T20 against SL in Bangladesh so I’m not sure where the idea that he’s weak against spin comes from. He took Ajantha Mendis to the cleaners that night (although there was so much dew on the ball no spinner could grip it properly).
My guess is that if Roy shows any form, Hales is a goner.
Interview with Hales back in April 2019 where he tells his version of events:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/apr/01/alex-hales-england-cricket-interview
Hm, not sure that either you or Marc has hit the nail completely accurately here:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7007757/ben-stokes-alex-hales-brawl/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3643065/England-cricket-star-Ben-Stokes-threatened-jail-banned-driving-FOUR-speeding-offences.html
Last week, vice-captain, Jos Buttler said that he looked forward to welcoming Hales back into the fold. Last month, Chairman of Selectors that the opportunity was there for Hales to join the squad this summer. However, Morgan remains adamant that he has no intention of recalling Hales. Why would an England captain, entering into an World Cup, not want a squad of players in their prime – especially one with Hales’ pedigree. Hales has apologised, changed his ways and stated his 8ntention to regain his place. When Stokes got into trouble he didn’t face two years of international isolation. He said sorry, missed one series and walked straight back in. Hales took recreational drugs. He wasn’t the first international player to do so and he won’t be the last. If England is to win the forthcoming T20 World Cup they will need to take 15 world-class players. As the team stands, it’s strong. But the fringe players are simply not good enough to play in a World Cup. In Hales, you have one of the top five T20 batsmen in the world, in clean and in the prime of his life. So, why the silky tantrum, Erin? Afraid, that your captaincy lone might not keep you in the team? Or, do you delight in ending people’s international careers such as Liam Plunkett and, another player who should be in the T20 squad, David Willey. Maybe Smith and Giles should remind Morgan that he’s simply the captain and not Lord Executioner. They will no doubt want to win the competition but their captain’s rigid pettiness may well stop them. #halesforengland #willeyforengland
Perhaps the two links below may provide context as to why Morgan doesn’t want Hales back in the team.
https://wisden.com/stories/magazine/deep-cover-crickets-white-line-fever
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/8693254/alex-hales-dumped-after-cheating/
As the articles show, it’s not just about a one-off drugs charge or what happened in Bristol, but that he was a constant toxic, disruptive presence in the team. Most telling was the fact that he didn’t apologise at the pre-world cup squad get-together in Cardiff.
Hales was also part of a very nasty, toxic, misogynistic culture that existed within cricket at the time (and I don’t know how much has changed), and Morgan has repeatedly mentioned the words ‘culture’ and ‘trust’ when he talks about his team.
With Hales having messed up time and time again in the past, it is surely understandable that Morgan would be very wary of trusting someone who epitomised the very toxic culture that Morgan has tried so hard to eradicate from his team.
Having said which, if Hales really has changed and is totally focused on his cricket, which he appears to be at the moment, he deserves one final chance at redemption. But it really is last chance saloon, and I suspect will only happen if Morgan has no better alternatives.
Ren,
I think that the key point that several of us are making is that, whilst what you say may we’ll be true, the make up of the squad should be for the selectors to decide : it should not be purely the captain’s decision.
The original decision was a team decision, not taken unilaterally by Morgan. There is a sub-article in the first article that references how the decision was made.
If the entire team is in agreement, what can the selectors do? Also, how do you know that the selectors aren’t in agreement and happy to defer to Morgan’s judgment?
The issue only becomes problematic if the selectors (and certain team members) and Morgan end up at odds with the team selection.
I get the feeling that’s where it’s heading now with the contradictory messages being given out by various parties.
But until recently, it always appeared that everyone was on the same page about Hales’ exclusion. So it will be interesting to see what happens in the summer.
This latest article seems to confirm what I said above about the selectors making different noises to Morgan.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/mar/11/alex-hales-offered-a-way-back-to-england-team-by-ashley-giles
This is Pietersen 2 to me…and even worse than the blurring of lines between the decision-makers is the bullying, sanctimonious and hypocritical moralising.
So if you’re going to talk about trust, then you have to makes sure too that he can trust you–which means that when you say that the door isn’t shut permanently, it means something rather than being a convenient euphemism for “we’re never going to pick him again but we’re too scared of an employment tribunal case to say so”.
Having standards also means that you can apply some sort of perspective and consistent standards to the situation, rather than coming down really heavily on someone for taking recreational drugs in his spare time or cheating on his girlfriend while not not doing the same to the players who drink drive or the one who was caught speeding so many times that the magistrates told him they’d send him to prison next time they saw him.
Let’s hope at least that if they “reintegrate” Hales–and what’s with the pious, pretentious language? Ffs, it’s not trying to integrate a former Stasi torturer into 1990s East German society, it’s a bunch of men who play cricket!–they don’t do what they did with Pietersen and make him go through a ritual apology to each member of the team individually as if they were reenacting a humiliation ritual from Maoist China.
Just to clarify, the article about him cheating on his girlfriend wasn’t to reference his cheating, it was to show the negative impact of his amoral behaviour on team harmony and unity. That was the part of the article I found illuminating.
It’s not about morality. Clearly, the players didn’t care that he was shagging around. It became a problem when the wags found out, told his missus and all hell broke loose.
If a player’s bad behaviour causes that kind of chaos and disruption to the team, then it’s understandable that the team would want him excluded.
Your reference to Pieterson is very apt. There was another player whose toxic presence divided the team, obviously for completely different reasons.
You are absolutely right that players’ transgressions get treated differently. There is certainly a huge element of hypocrisy involved. Sport is a results business. Expediency is everything.
If England do poorly in India, they will get a lot of flak if they don’t recall him. If, on the other hand, they do very well, Morgan will have the perfect excuse for keeping him out, saying they don’t need him.
However, it’s not in his interest to be vindictive. If England go to the world cup without Hales and don’t win, Morgan will never live it down.
Hales has been punished more than enough, and given the stellar form he’s shown in the Big Bash it’s time to bring him back into the fold. Just like we saw with KP, “culture” and “trust” can be used as a cover for “we just don’t like you”.
Well said mate.
Absolutely right mate. I’m not a T20 man, but you play the best available. Hales is undoubtedly one and head and shoulders above Roy in the pecking order, even if he was/is an arse.
Cricket has been littered with “difficult” players since probably the late 19th Century and the “Demon” Spoforth. It’s about something no one as yet has mentioned: man management. Jesus they have enough advisors and consultants and supposed specialist coaches. England’s policy under the guise of “team harmony” ends up as a bunch of yes men who don’t rock the boat by occasionally busting out of the “bubble” as it were. Pietersen was difficult to say the least but he was the best batsman in the England side who was dropped largely because of Strauss and Cook’s tantrums and a few tweets after the disastrous Ashes Tour that winter. He actually had the best batting average in that failed side. When he played for Surrey he was actually praised by the team for his help with younger players. Hollioake’s great Championship side of 1998-2002 was littered with egos, temperemental and “difficult” players. But they were the best available, and Hollioake and Medlycott knew how to manage them. Botham was a loose cannon before Brearley, who knew how to get the best from him. These days he would have been dropped. I can think of Lillie, Thompson, Merv Hughes, even Waughan and many more.
There’s no Cook or Strauss now, but you have Smith, Harrison and the wretched ECB. And by what I’ve read here seemingly Morgan, who seems to have unlimited say over everything in white ball, unlike Root who struggles to get his best players out for a series in India.
Yes, red or white ball anyone? Seems we’ve recently been here.
There are blurred lines in this triangular argument: ability and available talent + all the role-model stuff, take it or leave it; + team-spirit considerations, which surely do matter, except to KP fans.
Hales is not the only batsman who might be considered to join what is already a more than decent top six. They really should find a place for Root, a better cricketer by a mile than any of the others, and didn’t he play one of the great T20 World Cup innings? I would personally prefer Vince to Hales, just from the aesthetic angle.
No doubt there will be statistical arguments to back up all choices, but I’m not sure how you quantify stuff like balance and team-spirit and ‘good in a crisis’, which are probably all part of Morgan’s gut feeling. I don’t think Hales’ (relatively) donkey-like fielding do him many favours.
Got my ex back, thanks to R.buckler11 @ g mail .com…♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)……………………